WILLIAM THE SILENT
BY
FREDERIC HARRISON
[1931AD edition]
CHAPTER II
GENERAL AND MINISTER—SECOND MARRIAGE—IN
LOYAL OPPOSITION
1556—1564
THE three years of war which Philip II. waged with Henry II. of France, and
which closed with such splendid success, opened with small promise, and
exhibited some of the worst features of bad military organisation. The
confusion of mercenaries of different race and language, enlisted in small
bodies by soldiers of fortune, on special terms for limited periods, and allowed
to pillage in lieu of pay, was combined with the minute and jealous
interference of a pedantic tyrant. He, like some feeble Byzantine Emperor,
would keep the conduct of the campaign in his own hands, whilst seeking to
foment rather than to remove the sources of separation in the heterogeneous
elements of his own armies. The ultimate success of Philip was due to the
magnificent qualities of his Spanish veterans, and the military genius of one or
two amongst his generals. To the Prince of Orange fell the thankless task of
allaying discontents, consulting the King on details of the campaign, and
importuning him for the needed money and supplies.
No more dreary record of mismanagement can be read than the letters that
passed between William and Philip whilst the Prince was in command of the
forces round Philippeville. “Sire,” writes the Prince (5th January 1556), “have
pity on the Spanish infantry, which, for lack of pay and out of sheer starvation,
is scouring the low country round, plundering the peasantry in mere need of
food. These disorders I cannot repress, much less can I punish them, for
necessity has no law.” The exasperation (7th January 1556) is such that the
country people are talking of taking up arms at the sound of their tocsins to
defend their homes, such tumultuous assemblies being likely to prove most
dangerous. The whole story reads like a page from the secret history of the
Sublime Porte and its starved regiments.
During the year 1556, following upon the hollow truce of Vaucelles, the
Prince was employed in negotiations partly to induce the Estates to grant
supplies, partly to raise new mercenary forces, partly on missions to the
German princes. It was a strange task to be imposed on a young soldier of
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twenty-three, but the Prince was from boyhood more politician than warrior,
and for two years he exerted the whole force of his tact and adroitness in
obtaining grants for the King, and in bringing the German Rittmeisters to
accept his niggardly offers. In the brilliant campaign of 1557, the Prince seems
to have had only a subordinate part. Philip took the field in May with a
splendid army of Spanish, German, Netherland, and English troops, under
Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy. It was Count Egmont whose impetuous
valour decided the great victory of St. Quentin (10th August), followed within
the month by the storming of the fortress, the capture of the Constable
Montmorency, the Admiral Coligny, and a crowd of French nobles. It is clear
from three letters of the Prince to his wife that he took part in the siege of St.
Quentin, and the other forts on the Oise,—a campaign which carried the arms
of Philip in triumph to within sixty miles of Paris. But there is no evidence
what ever of the particular services that William rendered and accident or the
jealousy of the King may have deprived him of filling any conspicuous place
in the campaign.
Nor had the Prince any leading part in the brilliant campaign of 1558,
which destroyed the military power of France. He is ordered on service to
Narnur, to meet the assaults of the Duke of Guise in the Luxemburg but we
have no record of his operations; whilst, again the fiery valour of Egmont won
the splendid victory of Gravelines, near Calais, and left Henry of France
prostrate and disarmed. The moment had arrived for negotiations, which had
already been begun by the crafty Bishop of Arras on the one side, and the
intriguing Cardinal of Lorraine on the other. Within a month of the victory of
Gravelines, Philip had ordered the Prince to open informal pourparlers with
Marshal St. Andre and the Constable Montmorency, both prisoners of St.
Quentin, the Marshal having been lodged on parole at the Prince’s palace of
Breda. These overtures led to a formal negotiation between the two French
chiefs on the part of Henry,—the Prince, Ruy Gomez de Silva, and the Bishop
of Arras on the part of Philip. The treaty of Câteau-Cambresis was eventually
concluded (3rd April 1559).
There is little doubt that the chief hand in this masterly negotiation, and in
composing the despatches which still remain, was that of the astute Bishop.
But the Prince, though yet but twenty-five, had no small part in the work, and
we need not treat as exaggerated the claim he makes in his Apology.
“As to this Treaty, which was as disastrous to France as it was honourable and profitable
to Spain, if I may be allowed to speak of my own part, the King could not deny (had he a trace
of gratitude left) that I was one of the prime instruments and agents to secure him so
advantageous a peace; for it was at the instance of the King himself that I opened the first
secret negotiations with the Constable and Marshal St. Andre. The King assured me that the
greatest service in the world that I could render him would be to conclude this treaty of peace,
which he desired to obtain at all cost, in order that he might return to Spain.” And this is borne
out by several authorities and by the admission of his Catholic enemy, Pontus Payen, who
says that the Prince “held the first rank amongst the envoys of the King, and won high esteem
on both sides in this affair.”
The Prince was selected as one of the State hostages to reside with Henry,
in order to guarantee the execution of the Treaty, the other hostages being
Egmont, the Duke of Alva, and the Duke of Aerschot; and, accordingly,
William went to Paris in June 1559, and it was there that took place the
famous incident which won him the name of The Silent. The story has been
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admirably told by the Catholic, Pontus Payen, and it is precisely confirmed by
the Apology itself, and other authorities. Pontus thus relates:—
One day, during a stag-hunt in the Bois de Vincennes, Henry, finding himself alone with
the Prince, began to speak of the great number of Protestant sectaries who, during the late war,
had increased so much in his kingdom to his great sorrow. His conscience, said the King,
would not be easy nor his realm secure until he could see it purged of the “accursed vermin,”
who would one day overthrow his governments under pretence of religion, if they were
allowed to get the upper hand. This was the more to be feared since some of the chief men in
the kingdom, and even some princes of the blood, were on their side. But he hoped by the
grace of God and the good understanding that he had with his new son, the King of Spain, that
he would soon master them. The King talked on thus to Orange in the full conviction that he
was cognisant of the secret agreement recently made with the Duke of Alva for the extirpation
of heresy. But the Prince, subtle and adroit as he was, answered the good King in such a way
as to leave him still under the impression that he, the Prince, was in full possession of the
scheme propounded by Alva; and under this belief the King revealed all the details of the plan
arranged between the King of Spain and himself for the rooting out and rigorous punishment
of the heretics, from the lowest to the highest rank, and in this service the Spanish troops were
to be mainly employed.
All this the Prince heard without a word and without moving a muscle.
This incident not only gave the eloquent Prince his paradoxical name, but it
proved a great epoch in his life,—it is hardly too much to say an epoch in the
history of his age. Writing more than twenty years afterwards in his Apology,
he says:—
I confess that I was deeply moved with pity for all the worthy people who were thus
devoted to slaughter, and for the country, to which I owed so much, wherein they designed to
introduce an Inquisition worse and more cruel than that of Spain. I saw, as it were, nets spread
to entrap the lords of the land as well as the people, so that those whom the Spaniards and
their creatures could not supplant in any other way, might by this device fall into their hands.
It was enough for a man to look askance at an image to be condemned to the stake. Seeing all
this (he continues in his impetuous way) I confess that from that hour I resolved with my
whole soul to do my best to drive this Spanish vermin from the land; and of this resolve I have
never repented, but believe that I, my comrades, and. all who have stood with us, have done a
worthy deed, fit to be held in perpetual honour.
It is possible that the desperate struggle of twenty years may have
somewhat coloured the Prince’s memory, and that his conversion from being a
magnificent prince and a trusty servant of the King of Spain into an ardent
champion of liberty of conscience and national independence, may not have
been quite so sudden as he had come to think it. And, as we shall see, the
Apology was not at all throughout the work of his own pen. But, again, Pontus
Payen tells the story almost exactly as does Orange himself.
The Prince, having thus wrung his secret from the King, maintained his composure for two
or three days, and then obtained leave to make a journey to the Netherlands on private
business of importance. No sooner had he reached Brussels than he explained to his intimate
friends what he had heard in the Bois de Vincenne giving a sinister meaning to the excellent
purposes of the two Kings, who (he said) designed to exterminate the great chiefs so as to fill
their own treasuries by confiscations, and ultimately to set up an absolute tyranny under
pretence of extirpating heresy. And when he left the city, he counselled them to make the
withdrawal of the Spanish troops a formal demand in the States-General about to be held at
Ghent.
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This is the point at which the whole life of the Prince receives a great
change. He was now twenty-six, when he enters on a resolute, but very
guarded, career of resistance to the projects of Philip. His first combination
(and one, as we shall see, which completely failed) was to form a party of
constitutional opposition headed by the great nobles of the country, and
resting on the historic rights of the provinces and the States-General. His ideas
at this period are fairly stated in the Apology. Not only was he shocked by the
cruelties inflicted on “the poor people who allowed themselves to be burned,”
but he saw such signs of insurrection even amongst the higher nobility as
presaged a Civil War like that from which France had so cruelly suffered. He
was too much exposed to the arm of Philip to defy him openly; and the King
knew him to be so able and so powerful a magnate that he did not care to drive
him into rebellion. In a Chapter of the Order of the Golden Fleece the Prince
secured the election of Hoogstraeten and Montigny, powerful Netherland
nobles, against the known wishes of Philip. He urged on the States to press for
the withdrawal of the Spanish troops, and he specially advised them to make
this withdrawal a condition of voting supplies. Thus, he told them, they would
gain a hundred times more than by humble supplications. Here we have the
policy of our own Long Parliament eighty years later.
Philip, who was now resolved on his departure for Spain, was obliged to
temporise. He gave evasive replies; appointed Orange and Egmont nominal
commanders of the Spanish contingent, their real leader being Julian Romero.
Orange was commissioned as Governor of Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht,
with a donation of 40,000 crowns (also purely nominal). When Philip set forth
in great state for Spain (from whence he never returned), he was attended by
the nobles, whom be solemnly embraced. Then turning to Orange, he
upbraided the Prince for the refusal of the States to vote supplies. This, said
the Prince, was the act of the States. “No los estados ma vos, vos, vos,’ cried
the King, a memoir-writer declares, shaking the Prince’s wrist. For once Philip
spoke in his wrath more truthfully than was his habit in affairs of State.
When Philip withdrew to Spain, where his purpose was to secure the
absolute ascendancy of himself and of Catholic orthodoxy, he left the
Netherlands in a most uneasy condition. The great nobles had impoverished
themselves in peace and in war with ruinous excesses; the burghers resented
the arbitrary suppression of their historic privileges, the constant exactions of
the Government, and the maintenance in their midst of 3000 Spanish soldiers;
whilst the Reformation was constantly making way both in the Dutch and the
Belgian provinces. After long deliberation, Philip had appointed as his Regent
his half-sister, Margaret, Duchess of Parma, a natural daughter of the Emperor
Charles V. Margaret was a woman of masculine nature, devoted to Philip and
to the Church, of much capacity for affairs, energetic, provident, and
laborious. A complex system of three councils was instituted to assist, control,
and counterbalance each other—the principal Council of State consisting of
Perronet, Bishop of Arras, Berlaymont, and Viglius, devoted agents of Philip,
with Egmont and Orange as titular members. It was soon found that Egmont
and Orange were not admitted to the inner camarilla. Business was practically
carried on by the Bishop, a minister of consummate industry, craft, and
perseverance, who, with his two creatures, was the trusted confidant of the
Regent. Orange and Egmont were only used by them to give some character to
the Council of State, to induce the States to vote supplies, and to figure as the
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nominal commanders of the Spanish forces. Orange, on his side, whilst
remaining loyal to the Regent, used his position to check the advance of
absolutism and persecution. In the formal instructions given to him on his
appointment as Governor of the three Provinces, and in the secret
memorandum accompanying it, he was ordered, he tells us, to put to death
“some worthy people suspected of religion. This his conscience would not
allow him to do. And he sent them private warning of their danger, holding it
right to obey God rather than man.”
By the death of his father, William, Count of Nassau (6th October 1559),
the Prince, as the eldest son, now became chief of the House of Nassau. In a
fine letter to his younger brother, Louis, he expresses his grief for the loss of
so excellent a father, urges them all to follow in his footsteps for the honour of
the house, “and this will be easy, if they all dwell together in love and mutual
support. He will do his part to help them, to console their mother to whom
they owe so much, and to be a father to the sisters who have lost their own.”
By the family compact, possession of the German estates passed to John, the
next brother, and the only one of his brothers who survived the Prince; but
Orange still remained Count of Nassau, with a titular interest in the Nassau
honours and estates.
The Prince had now been a widower for a year and a half, and he was
contemplating a second marriage. Anne of Egmont died in March 1558.
Orange had been at Frankfort on a mission to surrender the Imperial crown,
and incidentally to attach the German princes to the service of Philip. On his
return he found his young wife at the point of death, was himself prostrated
with fever and nervous spasms, and writes to the Bishop to pour out his
poignant grief. There is every reason to believe in the sincerity of his affection
and of his sorrow, though it must be remembered that for the greater part of
their six years of married life, the Prince had spent most of his time on service
away from home. From camp he had been wont to write to her:—“All in the
world I have is yours; “Next to God, you are the one I love best, and if I did
not know that your love for me is the same, I could not be so happy as I am”;
“May God give us both the grace to live always in this affection without any
guile.” The marriage gave birth to two children, Philip-William, Count of
Buren, afterwards Prince of Orange, the degenerate, Spaniardised son of his
father, and Mary, ultimately Countess of Hohenlohe.1
It would have been contrary to all the ideas and habits of the age for a
young man of princely rank to remain long single. Orange himself was of an
amorous temperament, keenly alive to the future of his great name and House;
and already, as he admits and almost boasts, burdened with an expenditure of
a million and a half of forms in peace or war. He regarded a great alliance to
be a natural duty of his rank and position. As he told Philip, his friends and
relations were importunate for him to marry, considering his youth, and the
interests of his House. On the failure of two previous proposals, the Prince
flung himself with extraordinary vehemence and obstinacy to secure an
alliance even more brilliant and promising, which brought him a great
position, much shame, long anxiety, and his own valiant and astute successor,
Maurice of Nassau, ultimately Prince of Orange.
The bride whom the Prince resolved to win was Anne, daughter and heiress
of that Maurice, Duke of Saxony, who had so rudely shaken the very throne of
Charles V., and granddaughter of Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, one of the most
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ardent chiefs of the Reformation. Anne, now in her seventeenth year, not illlooking, but ill-made, somewhat lame, of a violent nature which ended in
madness, had been brought up at Dresden by her uncle, Augustus, Elector of
Saxony, as a Protestant. She would have a considerable fortune, was entitled
to a great inheritance, and her rank and connections offered the most splendid
alliance in Germany. The Prince had never seen her; she had no pretensions to
charm; the obstacles to such a match were formidable. But the very difficulties
seemed to spur him to action, whilst his politic spirit foresaw the advantages
of an alliance with the great and almost independent magnates of Central
Germany.
Orange was a Catholic, the subject, counsellor, and minister of the most
Catholic King, having all his domains within the power of Philip, who held his
whole life and fortunes, as it were, in pledge for his loyalty and his orthodoxy.
Anne was a Protestant, the daughter of the old Emperor’s most dangerous
enemy, niece and granddaughter of two devoted chiefs of the Lutheran
movement. The negotiations for this adventurous marriage, which were
carried on for nearly two years, form a strange tripartite battle between the
Prince and his family, the German Protestant chiefs, and Philip with his
agents, Margaret and Granvelle. The old Landgrave was furious that his
granddaughter should marry a Papist, Philip and his Council were shocked
that his subject should dream of marrying a heretic, the daughter of malignant
Lutherans and enemies of his House. The Prince was forced to compromise,
and he needed all his consummate powers of diplomacy to satisfy Philip that
he would remain Catholic, and that his wife should live “like a Catholic”; to
satisfy the Elector that he was no enemy of the Lutherans and that he would
not force Anne’s conscience; and withal to avoid giving the Elector, the
Landgrave, Philip, or the Duchess any formal or written pledge whatever.
The bride’s relations wrote long despatches in praise of the Confession of
Augsburg; the Prince replied gaily that a young wife had better read romances
than theology. He wrote to the old Landgrave with almost evangelical unction;
he wrote to the King protestations of orthodoxy and loyalty. William made
several journeys into Germany, where he won over the Duke of Saxony, many
of the great chiefs, and presently Anne herself. The long, subtle, and astute
despatches which passed between Brussels, Spain, and Dresden, in French,
German, and Spanish, fill hundreds of pages of the printed archives. A volume
would hardly exhaust the ingenious and characteristic turns of the long
negotiation. The Bishop is subtle, far-sighted, politic; Philip is suspicious,
hostile, but timid; the Elector is blunt, practical, and secretly anxious to get his
niece off his hands and out of the Empire; the Landgrave is bigoted, obstinate,
and angry; the Prince is diplomatic, astute, eloquent, and resolute. He makes
profuse promises, but none that he cannot keep without dishonour. He protests
that he is a Catholic and means to remain a Catholic. He protests that he can
respect the Lutheranism of his wife and of her relations. In all this he spoke
substantial truth, and he fairly fulfilled his pledges. “I will say no more,” he
haughtily replied at the wedding ceremony, “than that I will act as I shall
answer hereafter to God and to man.”
Another volume might be filled with the story of the wedding, which took
place at Leipsic in August 1561. It was splendid even for that age adorned
with royalties, serene highnesses, dukes and prelates, in abundance. All
Germany rang with the story of the gathering and its pomp. William, who was
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now twenty-eight, and had been a widower more than three years, took with
him a retinue almost royal. It is said that more than five thousand persons were
invited and eleven hundred horses were required. He had desired to have the
nobles of the Netherlands of his party; but the Duchess refused this, and
permitted only Baron Montigny to go as representing the King. Philip,
“willing to wound and yet afraid to strike,” dared not show his wrath in public;
he sent his formal compliments and 3000 crowns to present a ring to the bride.
The ceremony was performed with strict Lutheran rites; festivities were
continued for days; and the young bride went to her new home at Breda,
passionately fond of her courtly spouse—“as happy as a queen” she wrote to
her grandfather.
The Prince had indeed won a victory and a bride which were to cost him
dear. A marriage of policy was at that time a matter of course to a man of the
highest rank aspiring to a great career. And at this period of life William, as he
confesses, was a man of the world, a man of his age. The alliance with the
great chiefs of Lutheran Germany offered him a source of permanent strength.
He had no kind of purpose at this time himself to become Lutheran, or any
other type of Protestant. He intended to conform to the Catholic rites, and he
did so conform for years afterwards. He respected the Lutherans and even the
Calvinists; but they did not satisfy him. He abhorred persecution, but he
loathed fanaticism, anarchy, and violence. He had no intention of fomenting
rebellion in the Netherlands, nor of converting it to Protestantism. But he did
contemplate a combination between the nobles of the Netherlands and of
Germany to stem the autocracy of Philip and to drive back the threatened
Inquisition. As an English agent wrote, the marriage had made the Prince a
power. He had no dogmatic conviction as to any one of the competing creeds;
and in marrying a Protestant princess, he meant to retain a Catholic household,
to conform to the Catholic Church, and yet to secure the alliance of Protestant
chiefs. Throughout he acted as politician, not as theologian. He was a
diplomatist, not a reformer, a statesman, not a preacher; a man of the world,
not a saint. As he passed into middle life and the terrific struggle which
absorbed and killed him, he grew to a deeper conscience and a more spiritual
temper. But, at twenty-eight, he was entirely and solely a politic Prince
seeking to found a party of honest patriots.
For a time, and until Philip resorted to the terrible weapon of an
overwhelming Spanish army, the constitutional opposition to persecution and
absolutism that Orange organised had a very real success. On his accession the
King, by the advice of Granvelle, had reissued the edicts of 1550 published by
Charles V. for the suppression of heresy,—“to stamp out this plague by the
roots,” said the preamble of the Emperor’s decree. This atrocious code of
persecution had not been regularly enforced, and every attempt to enforce it
added to the public irritation. Next, a complete reorganisation of the
ecclesiastical dioceses of the Netherlands was effected by the Popes, Paul IV.
and Pius IV., in 1559-60; by this three new Archbishoprics were created, and
the fifteen bishoprics were divided amongst them. By this system a new form
of inquisition into heresy was practically created. Granvelle was made
Archbishop of the principal see, that of Mechlin, and was shortly honoured
with the Red Hat, so that he is henceforth known as the Cardinal. To all this
scheme of reaction Orange offered a resolute opposition. He protested in
Council, remonstrated with the Regent, Granvelle, and the King against the
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persecution of heretics, and incessantly, in public and in private, pressed on
the withdrawal of the Spanish troops, on whom hung the whole force of the
Spanish tyranny.
In these efforts Orange was supported by Egmont and most of the great
nobles. He and Egmont resigned their nominal command of the Spanish
troops, and formally demanded in council their withdrawal from the country.
The Regent, the Bishop, and at last the most devoted servants of the King saw
that government could not be carried on without this concession. Philip
yielded to necessity, and at last the Spaniards were dismissed home. The
Cardinal now felt all the difficulties of his position. Egmont treated him with
defiance and open contempt; and the old intimacy between Orange and
Granvelle was at an end. The Prince and Egmont wrote formally to Philip to
insist on their resignation of the Council, unless they were admitted to its real
deliberations. Recriminations between Orange and the Cardinal were
constantly despatched to Madrid. A secret diplomatic duel was waged between
them. The Cardinal inveighs against “the League” formed amongst the nobles
to oppose their King, and against their leader and chief, who, he astutely
suggests, might be sent away and made governor of Sicily. At last, the wily
Prelate recognised the full power of the grown man, whom he had known and
loved as a boy and then as his own apt pupil and colleague.
The Prince is a dangerous man (he wrote to Philip), subtle, politic, professing to stand by
the people, and to champion their interests, even against your edicts, but seeking only the
favour of the mob, giving himself out sometimes as a Catholic, sometimes as a Calvinist or
Lutheran. He is a man to undertake any enterprise in secret which his own vast ambition and
inordinate suspicion may suggest. Better not leave such a man in Flanders. Give him a
magnificent embassy or a viceroyalty, or perhaps call him to your own court. As to Egmont,
he has been led away by Orange but he is honest, a good Catholic, and can easily be brought
round, by appealing to his vanity and his jealousy of the Prince.
These invectives of the Cardinal were not without justification. From this
point certainly Orange was incessantly working to form some alliance that
might enable the Netherlands to baffle the Spanish tyrant. He turned, now to
the Lutheran princes of Germany. now to the Huguenots of France, now to the
Queen of England. He rallied the Flemish nobles in conference, sent Montigny
to Spain to remonstrate with the King; when Philip peremptorily orders a force
to be raised to help the King of France against the Huguenots, the Prince in
Council succeeded in resisting the attempt. A scheme is even formed to obtain
the annexation of Brabant to the Empire. Defying the royal opposition, the
Prince goes to the coronation of the Emperor Maximilian at Frankfort. There
and elsewhere he carries on negotiations with German chiefs. Margaret and
Philip are warned that he has some great design on hand. Whatever it was, no
solid alliance was effected. At the same time, he is in relations with
Elizabeth’s agents, Throckmorton and Gresham. But neither Elizabeth nor the
German princes were willing to engage in an open defiance of Spain.
The hostility to the Cardinal waxed fiercer day by day. Egmont and other
nobles treated him with haughty contempt. The people filled the streets with
pasquinades and burlesques. Orange and Egmont worked incessantly against
him. As early as 1561, they had formally urged his recall. Montigny’s mission
had the same object. Throughout the year 1563 a series of despatches were
addressed to Philip signed by Orange, Egmont, and Horn, formally demanding
the withdrawal of the Cardinal, and refusing to serve with him in Council. The
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Regent herself began to weary of her imperious factotum. Philip remained
obstinate, perplexed, and irresolute. At his side rivals of the Cardinal
insinuated doubts and suspicions. The savage Duke of Alva, who now appears
upon the scene, stoutly supported Granvelle. “My blood boils, and I am like a
madman,” he wrote, “when I read the letters of these Flemings. Let them be
chastised. But, as that is not possible yet, divide them, and draw off Egmont.
As to those whose heads are to be cut off it is necessary to dissemble.” Philip
did dissemble. His creatures wrote from Spain to the Cardinal advising him to
withdraw. At last, in a secret letter, recently discovered, the King counselled
his Minister “to ask for leave of absence in order to visit his mother.” The
Cardinal took the hint, and early in 1564 he finally quitted Brussels, having
been for nearly five years the real ruler of the Netherlands.
The country breathed more freely. The Spanish troops, the secret Consulta,
the Cardinal, were all gone; and Orange and his League had won in their first
great bout. The nobles were intoxicated with delight; the people exulted; even
the Regent seemed glad to be rid of her master. The Prince lost no time in
consolidating his victory. It was quite true that he had formed a real “League,”
but it was not at all confined to the nobles, nor indeed to the nobles of the
Netherlands. Through his own family and his new Saxon alliances he was
incessantly organising the active co-operation of German Protestant princes.
But his ideas were also to bring the people into the struggle. He placed before
himself, we are told, three main objects:—
1. To obtain regular meetings of the States-General.
2. To organise a real, single, and efficient Council of State that should be
the supreme source of government.
3. To obtain a relaxation of the persecution of heresy.
His aim was very much that of our own Long Parliament eighty years later,
and so far it had been an entire success.
FOOTNOTE
1 As widower, Orange formed a connection with Eva Eliver, and by her he had a natural
son, Justin of Nassau, born September 1559, who became a famous seaman and bravely
seconded his brother Maurice and Barneveldt in the long struggle. Though only twenty-five at
his father’s death, Justin was made Admiral of Holland and Zeeland; he took part in many
desperate enterprises; had an important share in the Dutch support of England against the
Armada; was joined with Barneveldt in his mission to Henry IV, and to Elizabeth; and was
pronounced by Lord H. Seymour to be “a man very wise, subtle, and cunning.”
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